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Ed Lucas: Baseball takes hard line in 'the best interests of game'

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New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez talks during a news conference before the Yankees play the Chicago White Sox at US Cellular Field in Chicago on Monday, Aug. 5, 2013. Rodriguez was suspended through 2014 and All-Stars Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta and Everth Cabrera were banned 50 games apiece Monday when Major League Baseball disciplined 13 players in a drug case, the most sweeping punishment since the Black Sox scandal nearly a century ago.
(AP Photo/Charles Cherney)

Despite what my grandchildren think, I wasn’t around when Shoeless Joe Jackson and the rest of the 1919 “Black Sox” were banned from baseball in 1921 for supposedly fixing the World Series.

I have, however, witnessed several other people — including close friends — exiled from baseball. Fairly or unfairly, they are kept away in what’s been often called “the best interests of the game.”

What’s happening to Alex Rodriguez and the rest of the players caught up in this current performance-enhancing drugs scandal is nothing new. Baseball takes a hard line when it comes to certain things. Like no other sport, this game is so wired into American culture and history that every attempt is made to keep its integrity intact. That’s not always an easy thing to swallow.

In 1921, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was given the new title of Commissioner of Baseball, which came with tremendous power. What Landis decided was final. At the time, baseball was filled with players who skirted the rules and consorted with gamblers. It was a loose atmosphere and the culmination was the deliberately orchestrated throwing of the 1919 World Series by the White Sox. While the players involved were acquitted by a jury, Landis banned them from baseball forever. He explained his actions with a “best interests of the game” clause. (For more on the scandal, watch the excellent 1988 film “Eight Men Out” by Hoboken’s own John Sayles.)

Landis’ actions would seem honorable on the surface, but in reality he let dozens of other players off the hook, including superstars like Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, both of whom admitted to betting on baseball. Despite the double standard, the commissioner set the bar for the conduct of players and made the game squeaky clean.

In 1947, Landis’ successor, Happy Chandler, suspended Dodgers manager Leo Durocher for an entire season because the skipper married a woman who had been divorced. You read that right. Something that would barely cause a ripple today was threatening enough back then to invoke the commissioner’s “best interests” clause.

Baseball had to remain pure.

Ironically, Chandler himself was let go in 1951 by the owners because he fought for integration of the game. Chandler wanted each team to bring on African-American players, just as the Dodgers did with Jackie Robinson. The owners believed that would ruin the game and tried to invoke the clause to stop integration. Sometimes what’s seen as the “best interests” by a misguided few aren’t really.

A guy I knew really well was commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who held the office in the 1970s and 1980s. Under his watch, George Steinbrenner was banned from baseball for an illegal political contribution, A’s owner Charlie Finley was stopped from selling off his team and dozens of players were removed for use of cocaine — all with the “best interests” in mind.

One of the silliest invocations of the clause was also done by Kuhn. In 1983, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were working as greeters for two Atlantic City casinos. All they had to do was to shake hands at the casino door and play in a few golf tournaments. The two Hall of Famers were both long retired, but that didn’t matter to the commissioner. Kuhn barred them both from being involved in any way with baseball. Sixty years after the Black Sox, the shadow of gambling was so long that it affected common sense. Thankfully the ban was lifted soon after, and it’s now commonplace to see baseball legends at casino card shows and poker tournaments.

Pete Rose’s suspension in 1989 was the most high-profile of recent bans. Again, gambling was the main concern there. PEDs have taken over the headlines since, and the game has had to deal with suspicions and whispers of “juicing” for the last 20 years.

It’s good that stringent bans are now being put in place. They might finally curb the problem and convince future players to stay far away from steroids, HGH and other ways to enhance themselves and cheat. Commissioner Bud Selig has a tough road ahead, but one that needs to be traveled. Anyone who truly loves the game should agree.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Honesty is the best policy.” And, no, I didn’t know him either.